{"id":5221,"date":"2024-09-14T07:38:10","date_gmt":"2024-09-14T07:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5221"},"modified":"2024-09-16T10:20:06","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T10:20:06","slug":"bye-bye-summer-2024-hello-autumn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/2024\/09\/bye-bye-summer-2024-hello-autumn\/","title":{"rendered":"Bye-bye Summer 2024 – Hello autumn!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Well, that’s the summer of 2024 been and gone, and what a disappointment it was. Saying that we did have some days of warm weather, but it was never a “real<\/em>” summer, not the kind of summer that we remember from previous years. It was a busy summer for us this year. Plenty of work with lots of friends and family coming to visit us on the Island. You all know who you are. It was lovely to see you all and we hope to see you again soon. Many thanks for making the effort to come and see us, it’s a long way and not the easiest place to get to, so thank you very much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now autumn is with us, on Thursday the temperature dropped to single figures, and you can smell the change in the air.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have three weeks spare in September and thought that we would get away to France, now that all the families and kids have finished their holidays, the weather can still be warm and beautiful so why not? Hayley has done some prep and even booked a few sites for us to stay in advance. During our trip, we will be joined again by our good friend from the Island who spent some time with us on our last trip in May. She is going to be in France touring some of the finest chateaux, so we hope to be joining her soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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13th September 2024 – Home to Calais. 182 miles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are up early, ferries are booked, Jess is prepared so off we go. The Wightlink Ferry leaves on time, for a change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Next the long drive from Portsmouth to Dover, which is uneventful until we get to Cobham services on the M25 going east. Del fancies a coffee from Greggs, which is nice, however, the car park is in gridlock. No one can get out due to the only road out of the service station being blocked as most people want to go west toward Heathrow into roadworks and a huge traffic jam. All the traffic is backed up to the service station, brilliant. We are trapped there for 45 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, we are free from Cobham services and on our way. We make good progress and can get on an earlier ferry. Fabulous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The weather is stunning. It’s bright, sunny, warm and calm as we slip away from Dover and into the English Channel, we can see France clearly in the distance. The boat is empty but very empty. It is a fabulous afternoon crossing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tonight we will stop at an aire in Calais, a massive aire capable of holding over 100 vans. It’s still quite full even though the holidays are over. It would appear that a lot of people have the same idea as us… We get parked up, plugged up and cleaned up and set off for a walk after hours of sitting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a lovely evening in Calais. We visited here in May and it took us by surprise. It gets a lot of bad press about immigrants, hoards of men roaming the streets etc, but the beachfront is very smart and tidy. We have a good long walk before turning back towards our mobile home, stopping to take in the sunset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A very calm, relaxing and pleasant start to our trip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Well, that’s the summer of 2024 been and gone, and what a disappointment it was. Saying that we did have some days of warm weather, but it was never a “real” summer, not the kind of summer that we remember from previous years. It was a busy summer for us this year. Plenty of work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5221"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5221"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5327,"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5221\/revisions\/5327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vantours.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}